From controlling how an individual responds to stress exposure (Füzesi et al., 2016; Kim et al., 2019; Yuan et al., 2019) to regulating anxiety-like behaviors (Ramot et al., 2017; Zhang et al., 2017), or driving social transmission of stress (Sterley et al., 2018), the PVN-CRH neuron population appears to be a central player linking stress and anxiety. The gene discussed is CRH; the disease is Anxiety.